Interview (Part 3): Sam Boyer

My interview with the 2022 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Sam Boyer wrote the original screenplay “Ojek” which won a 2022 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sam about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Sam introduces us to some other key characters in his story and how the movie Drive was a “guiding star” in writing his script.

Scott: The plot summary that I read mentions the 2011 movie Drive, a film starring Ryan Gosling. That plot:”

A mysterious Hollywood action film stuntman gets in trouble with gangsters when he tries to help his neighbor’s husband rob a pawn shop while serving as his getaway driver.”

What about Drive? Did that inspire you at all? Were you influenced by that at all?

Sam: Truly, Drive was totally a lodestar for me. It was one of the first movies I watched when I arrived at USC, actually. I remember seeing it in USC’s theater, and thinking, “Man, are all movies this good? Is this what I can expect going forward?” Spoiler alert, no.

I later read Hossein Amini’s script, which I thought was beautiful, sort of in that sparse, evocative, Walter Hill style. It had genre elements, like the crime-thriller, elements of action, elements of noir. It also had a very powerful sense of place. Los Angeles features very heavily in there.

I thought that it would be a useful frame in terms of genre hallmarks to base Ojek off of. Help introduce an unusual profession, an unusual setting, and an unusual array of characters, but having that common ground to anchor things.

The dream has always been, even though this exists right now as a script, is having it one day made in a way where my family, my Indonesian‑American family, and then my family in Indonesia can all go see it one day. Using Drive as a guiding star has always helped me express it to people.

It’s been cool after this situation with the Nicholl. People who thought that, “Oh, it’s impossible to make a movie in Indonesia. There’s no way.” Some of the people are like, “You know, we’ve always wanted to make a movie in Indonesia.” It’s been funny to watch those opinion shift.

Scott: I was struck by the tone, the tonal comparison. If you go on IMDb, it says, “Action, Drama.” That’s what it says about Drive. Your script is also action and drama. It’s got a lot of action in it, because of the motorcycle stuff. Really, at its heart, it’s got this dramatic dynamic.

There are at least three points of emotional connection with Gede with groups of people or individuals. We’ve talked about that one with the other Ojek drivers. That’s a connection, but there’s the two other relationships I want to talk about. One is the relationship he has with his brother Bejo. Could you describe Bejo and the nature of Gede’s relationship with his brother?

Sam: A lot of this, it’s a story about two brothers. Action is fun, and brings people to theaters, but drama keeps us in it scene‑to‑scene. This has always been, at some points, more drama, and at some points, more an action movie. If Gede is our loyalty to our family, Bejo is our unfettered ambition.

Bejo, to borrow from Drive again, he’s like the fable of the scorpion. He can’t help but sting himself inevitably. I thought that it was such a good metaphor for my own family’s journey from Sulawesi, an outlying island, to Jakarta. How the elders covet the wealth they’ve been able to obtain by moving to the big city. Then, the young have dreams of making it big somewhere else, but it’s so hard to leave this town.

There’s a certain entropy to these big cities where your whole universe is localized in a single place. Bejo is kinda like a human manifestation of this phenomenon — he’s sort of defined himself by this trauma that Gede accidentally inflicted upon him. Gede did something he’ll never forgive himself for and now Bejo’s whole life now is based around being able to manipulate Gede and keep him close.

On one hand, he’s able to do bold, interesting risky things that Gede would never dare to do. There are points at which you think they would complement each other, but these things only stay good for so long, because he can’t help but reach for more and Gede can’t help but say yes. Truly they’re doomed together without the advent of Lia in the story.

Scott: He strikes me as being a Trickster, Bejo. He’s like a schemer and a dreamer. He could be an ally, he could be an enemy, but he’s fundamentally out for himself. Of course, he comes up with a scheme, he comes up with a plan.

That actually, for a while is legitimate, I guess you could say, a business enterprise. What’s interesting about it, he’s basically using Gede and his talents to deliver things. Initially, it’s an illegal type of thing, but then gets even worse. Isn’t that a fair description?

Sam: Yeah. Goes from deliveries that are risky to deliveries that are wrong, and things that are beyond simply being illegal or breaking the letter of the law. They’re breaking basic human moral codes. It’s based on Bejo is able to turn a blind eye to it — and convince Gede to do the same.

Scott: Well, I thought what was interesting about Bejo was…because he’s a very complex character too. He’s got rationale. He’s got a sense of logic about…Like he says, every day he’s talking to his brother. “Every day you risk your life on that motorcycle driving people you don’t know, and for what?”

Our lives are hard because we’re taking the wrong risks, because he’s talking about we could do this and you could make a lot more money than you’re making now. He also says, “How many trips do you make now?” This is after Gede’s like, “Wait a minute, what exactly am I taking on these things?”

Bejo says, “How many trips do you make as an Ojek every year? One thousand? Do you think not one of them was carrying anything illegal?”

He’s crafty, and he’s got some rationale to what he’s doing.

By the end of Act One, here’s Gede, he finds himself being a delivery man, and then you meet this other person. You met this other person: Lia. Could you talk about what you see her role being in the story.

Sam: Lia as an attribute represents our own need for independence. I think that in past drafts, I fell into the trap like a lot of writers do, where there is this love interest, because I needed someone who would bring Gede to a better place. I could tell that wasn’t going to happen internally on his own. He needed this external stimulus.

He needed another character who could bring that out of him. I worked really hard making Lia a dynamic character with her own wants, needs, and interests and arc in the story, ultimately.

What’s great about Lia is, she knows what she wants pretty much the entire time, which is the opposite of Gede’s arc. He doesn’t know what he wants. Of course, he wants his brother to be happy. He wants to build a better life.

Lia is much more certain of what is right or wrong. What she was ultimately in it for in terms of trying to make money for her mother who ended up dying. Then by the end of the script, by the third act, she doesn’t know where to go when the nightclub burns down.

She is the one who after all this time talking to Gede about, “What more do you want out of life? Where do you want to go? Do you want to be at your brother’s back and call doing morally dubious things forever?” To really not being sure where she should go.

I knew even in the beginning of writing it, that I wanted those two perspectives to shift and for him to bring something to her as well where it isn’t one of these one‑sided relationships and could feel like it’s two humans and characters meeting. I wanted someone who could grow just as much as Gede was, while also pushing him to grow.

Here is a video of Sam’s Nicholl Award acceptance speech:

Tomorrow in Part 4, Sam discusses the story’s Nemesis figure and how he approached writing the script’s several action scenes.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Sam is repped by Range Media Partners.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.